To Go Up In Smoke
by Thinkette
Summary: Because, even if she barely glows, he makes her shine anyway: A short piece on knowing when you are enough.


Yukino never had a place she could fit into.

It was like all her life, she was folded down, neatly arranged like a trinket, smothered in her own solitude, stuffed in a box and used as an ornament. She was never the pretty one, never the strong one, never the smart one, never the ANYTHING. Only the intangible woman, there for the briefest moment when needed, gone the very next second.

Attention was not one of the things she was gifted often.

And it wasn't as if Sabertooth was all that warming and welcoming either, with their noses stuck up in the air at so many, their sneers open and all too real. She was never really noticed there either and a piece of her was so saddened by the fact that she wanted to cry, but of course, she couldn't.

Here in Sabertooth, you do the same as she does. You stuff away all that is in a box and crumple what can be broken, preserving it only so you may look back one day and sigh at what it once was.

No, Yukino never had a place to go, and Sabertooth was not where she belonged either.

But really, where DID she belong? She was never really solid, always blurred in her ideals, swaying this way and that to please others. She could be kind and yet unemotional. Gentle and then determined.

What had she ever done to deserve to be locked away like she was a blemish?

She joined Sabertooth because she wanted to become real. Because she didn't just want to be a trinket with no name; because she finally wanted to feel human.

Yukino was one of the throwaway people you saw on the streets. Easy to look over, simple to gloss away with a few footsteps. Her face was not haunting, her eyes not piercing, her smile not warming or cooling, nothing about her, in fact, was very noteworthy.

She wanted to be noteworthy.

But, perhaps getting kicked out of that guild was the most tangible thing she had ever done. Perhaps, in loss, she was finally acknowledged. They had all looked at her, some in pity, some with leering looks toward her shame, but they looked, all the same.

All but one.

To Rogue Cheney, she has always been, and always will be intangible, easy to forget, hard to remember.

So she cries, finally. What else can she do, after all? She has no place to go, no home to return to, no beauty that would garner her a place in someone else's bed, even for a price she was half unwilling to pay. She had nothing and nowhere to turn.

Even at her request to relinquish her magic, her feeble but real attempt at making up for her loss, paying for her failure was met with a denial.

Had she really no worth in this place? Would no one look at her, truly?

Sniffling, she remembered the kind hearted pink haired man who offered her comfort for but a few short moments. Those seconds, minutes, would warm her, would give her hope when she wanted it gone. Yukino sniffled, the cool cobblestones freezing against her flesh, feeling broken in from her spine. No, he is nothing like the pink haired man.

He is the representation of all she is not: Needed, appreciated, strong and beautiful. Rogue is a wisp you can't tame, a creature you cannot fold up and stuff into a locket. Rogue is admired, and adored, a protector, a guardian, a kind soul deep down.

But not even the ironic light in the guild would spare her a glance.

Yukino, truly and surely, was as real as the air she breathed.

Invisible, unexplainable, taken for granted.

She was as she had always been. After all, Yukino had never joined with the pretension that she would magically become beloved. No man ever adored her, she was never lavished with gifts nor kisses, affection was out of her grasp.

She sat there, cried, wailed, curled up against her luggage for she had no money to rent a room, especially during the Games, when tourists flocked like ants to sugar cubes and could not hear the faintly audible footsteps of the shadow.

How could she while she was drowning in her own grief?

Because she was always so blind to it all. To Rogue, Yukino was more than she would believe. She was a constant presence in a guild that was ever-changing. She was a single, damp flame that burned stoically, steadily, beautifully in its own, unnoticed way. She was all that he locked away in the dark, the things that could not be explained in words and the things you wouldn't want to.

So, seeing her flickered out, finally washed away, laved off of the skin of Sabertooth like a cheap, stick on tattoo had bruised his faith more than he'd like to let on. Seeing her stripped of her guild mark, of her connections and her dignity was sickening, and though the sight was not unappealing, he didn't have the stomach to look.

But he wouldn't sit by and watch someone unable to protect themselves get kicked when they were down. He kept his promises to Frosh, and he would stick to it. Rogue was protection: it was what he had become when he became strong, what he would always be and he would not relinquish the title even if it had to be wrestled from his cold hands.

He would make himself proud, he would one day be an idol in his own right.

They treated him like he was a god, but that wasn't right. So, he moved without the well placed steps he usually did. He moved like a man, and not a shadow. He approached her without contempt, took in her cries, how her fragile body bent in half, close to the floor, seeming to melt into the ground.

Kneeling in front of her, Rogue watched as she finally noticed, looking up, straight at him and seeming like she had seen a ghost. He removed his cape, wrapping it around her carelessly, sloppily, uncaring of what happened to it and hauled her up, grasping her small luggage crate with one hand as he led her off to the dorm he had to himself.

Her bewilderment kept her hand slack, but his grip was firm around her wrist as he led her to the disgustingly large space he had been given to share with his cat. They moved like darkness, not noticed by anyone. He shut the door with a quiet click behind him, nodded at Frosh and leading her into his room.

"You can stay for the night." He said, looking into her grateful eyes.

She said nothing, only looking back at him, a gleam in her eyes that illuminated the room, a smile on her face that could have melted glaciers. Rogue took her in, tracing her face, memorizing her before he turned to go, already having prepared the couch when he decided he was going to sniff her out.

"Sleep well." He called out, closing the door and leaving her in the warmth that was his generosity.

She lay down on the bed, taking in the smell of his pillows and curling up.

Perhaps, to Rogue, she will not always be intangible. If even for one night, she had been noticed, acknowledged, made real by hands that were so strong they could break mountains had they chosen to do so. If even for one night, she was flickered into reality, brightening and being lit. Because in darkness, one can see even a weak flame glow like a sun.

So, perhaps only with Rogue can she be tangible at all. Perhaps she will one day become more through his own will and hers.

Perhaps, one day, even if it is far from tonight, she will flicker back to life again.

And that is enough for her.

It will always be enough.

* * *

**BECAUSE THESE TWO DON'T GET THE LOVE I WANT THEM TO! Seriously, I love them and there is only ONE fic with these two as a couple! I am saddened.  
**

**So I made it...yeah.  
**


End file.
